I went down to the Arizona State Museum library last Wednesday and did some research. I looked at Ceramics and Ideology: Salado Polychrome Pottery by Patricia L. Crown she writes a lot about the red slip but completely ignores the biggest issue of all which is the white slip. There is absolutely nothing unique about the red slip on Salado pottery, the white however is entirely unique.She does talk about the vegetal paint, how it fires out at temperatures over such and such degrees and how it easily fires out of sherds that she refired. I believe that refiring tests done in commercial kilns are not very dependable since the atmosphere is completely different from that experienced in a wood fire and the temperatures and temperature fluctuations are very different. She says that Salado polychromes were fired at very low temperatures to keep the black paint from burning out, yet if that were the case two things would be apparent;
- An unusual amount of breakage as compared to other types because the pottery would not be as durable.
- Occasional examples of pottery that was accidentally overfired with all or most of the design fired off.
Neither of which in my experience are true. On that account I think she is wrong about how the black paint is achieved, what she hasn’t taken into account is Bentonite clay’s absorptive properties, as a modern example look at San Ildefonso Polychrome, it is painted with vegetal paint on a Bentonite slip and they don’t have to fire at extremely low temperatures to keep from burning out the design, it is their smudged black ware that is fired at lower temperatures.
Tags: Clay, Gila Polychrome, Salado
Posted in: Pottery
